I make a modest income from my paper crafts. Not enough to keep me and my kitty fed, but enough to have a little extra spending money from time to time. I do trade my paper bowls every once in a while with other artists, rather than selling them. But never have I tried to leverage a paper bowl into something really grand, like this guy did. He started with a paper clip, and after fourteen trades, he had a house!

Here's the story, which hit the news this past summer. 

It took almost a year and 14 trades, but Kyle MacDonald, a 26-year-old Montreal man, has been offered a two-story farmhouse in Kipling, Sask., for a paid role in a movie.

MacDonald began his quest last summer when he decided he wanted to live in a house. He didn't have a job, so instead of posting a resumé, he looked at a red paper-clip on his desk and decided to trade it on an internet website.

He got a response almost immediately — from a pair of young women in Vancouver who offered to trade him a pen that looks like a fish.

MacDonald then bartered the fish pen for a handmade doorknob from a potter in Seattle.

In Massachusetts, MacDonald traded the doorknob for a camp stove. He traded the stove to a U.S. marine sergeant in California for a 100-watt generator.

In Queens, N.Y., he exchanged the generator for the "instant party kit" — an empty keg and an illuminated Budweiser beer sign.

MacDonald then traded the keg and sign for a Bombardier snowmobile, courtesy of a Montreal radio host.

He bartered all the way up to an afternoon with rock star Alice Cooper, a KISS snow globe and finally a paid role in a Corbin Bernsen movie called Donna on Demand. 

"Now, I'm sure the first question on your mind is, "Why would Corbin Bernsen trade a role in a film for a snow globe? A KISS snow globe," MacDonald said on his website "one red paper-clip."

"Well, Corbin happens to be arguably one of the biggest snow globe collectors on the planet."

The town of Kipling, Sask., located about two hours east of Regina with a population of 1,100, has offered MacDonald a farmhouse in exchange for the role in the movie.

MacDonald and his girlfriend flew to the town. The mayor showed them the house, gave them the keys to the house and the town, and they all had fun. The town then held a competition for the movie role.

MacDonald said: "There's people all over the world that are saying that they have paper-clips clipped to the top of their computer, or on their desk or on their shirt, and it proves that anything is possible and I think to a certain degree it's true."

MacDonald, who has attracted international media in his quest, said the journey has turned out to be more exciting than the goal.

"This is not the end. This may be the end of this segment of the story, but this story will go on. "

One of these days I'm going to visit this house! It's really not that far away from me, and it's truly paper art.


This small, oddball home has been a local attraction since 1929. It's perched in a neighborhood on the rocky coast of Cape Ann, northeast of Boston. Similar to its Texas cousin, the Beer Can House, the Paper House is a novel wallcovering and furnishing effort on an otherwise normal domicile. You might wonder what happens to a "paper" house in a rainstorm -- well, the place has a regular tar and shingle roof.

Elis F. Stenman, with the assistance of his family, began the construction of the Paper House in 1922. For the next twenty years, the Stenmans layered and and pasted and rolled approximately 100,000 newspapers to use in the creation of their two-room dream home. What started as an experiment in novel construction materials yielded paper tables, chairs, lamps, and bookshelves.


There is a writing desk made from accounts of Charles Lindbergh's transatlantic flight, and a radio cabinet plastered with news from Herbert Hoover's presidential campaign. A real piano is covered with paper rolls.

The grandfather clock includes mastheads (or "flags") from the capital city newspapers of all (then) 48 states.

The threat of fire to so flammable a structure doesn't seem to keep the Paper House owners (who live next door in a regular house) awake at night.

The walls are made of 215 layers of newspaper. Most of the exterior layer type is completely readable, and Paper House visitors can spend hours perusing classic headlines and snippets of articles.